Roger Frizzell, Carnival Corp's chief communications officer, is adept at grappling with any public relations challenge that comes his way.

That is not surprising: he began wrestling at the age of eight after being encouraged by a fellow cub scout and went on to become one of the world's best.

"The minute I got into wrestling, it became a passion," says Frizzell, 57. "I love the strategy and the technique... It was great fun."

He lost only two of 84 matches in four years for Oklahoma's Midwest City High School Bombers in the late 1970s and became a high-school All-American.

He was also a three-time state champion, four-time champion in both freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling, and national Amateur Athletic Union freestyle high-school champion.

A four-time National Collegiate Athletic Association All-American wrestler for the University of Oklahoma Sooners, he broke the university record with 114 victories on graduating in 1983 and remains on its top-10 list for career pins.

Frizzell went on to win silver and gold medals in the US senior national freestyle wrestling championships, as well as a bronze in the junior world freestyle championships.

He came close to making the 1980 US Olympic team, being beaten by Chuck Yagla (another PR merchant) in 1979 in the senior national freestyle championships. "All through the tournament, I was wrestling my idols," Frizzell recalls.

In the event, Yagla and the rest of the US team did not compete in the Moscow Games because of the boycott in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Other legendary grapplers he squared off with include Sooners teammate Dave Schultz and Kenny Monday of Oklahoma State University, both of whom went on to win Olympic gold.

Upon graduating in 1983 with a degree in journalism and public relations, the National Wrestling Hall of Fame member joined the PR department of telephony giant Bell System, AT&T's predecessor.

After working with Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Pacific Gas and Electric Co and American Airlines, he came onboard at Carnival in 2013 just as Arnold Donald was named chief executive. Frizzell was tasked with creating PR oversight for the company's 10 brands, a job he describes as "a dream come true".

He also volunteered for seven months as PR director for a 20-member committee that successfully campaigned to keep wrestling in the Olympics.

Frizzell — who has won more than 150 PR awards, including induction into the PR News Hall of Fame — attributes his professional success to learning how to stay calm under pressure while on the wrestling mat.

"I really credit that to wrestling because there were matches where I was seven points behind, and I just battled back and didn't panic."